Jo'Burg Days: Fair Stood The Wind – Part Five
...“Matters had become so bad through unemployment after the close of the Crimean war that those who had the opportunity to leave for South Africa readily seized it and many hundreds more would have come had they had the opportunity...
Barbara Durlacher continues her entertaining and well-researched account of how her forebears came to settle in South Africa.
To read earlier episodes and lots of other articles and stories by Barbara please click on http://www.openwriting.com/archives/joburg_days/
Life And Work In The East End Of London In The 1800s (Continued)
Other memories of those youthful days, taken from William James Symons’ November 1917 memoirs read as follows ...
“A number of the passengers were mechanics with their families, men who had been employed in the shipyards on the banks of the Thames, and before the engineer’s strike which drove the ship-building to the Clyde, there were numerous sources of employment. C.J Mare, the Member of Parliament for Plymouth, was the head of a large firm which built iron vessels for the Peninsular & Oriental Company, and many others, while I as a boy was employed by the firm at the enormous salary of one shilling per diem for 12 hours’ attendance at the works.
While I was working there, the Himalaya was building and was then the largest vessel in the world (this was in ’53), and was quite an attraction to visitors, being fitted in what was a fashion that was then considered most luxurious. However, she was not quite complete when the British Government secured her to carry troops to the Crimean war; her beautiful panels were all removed and she became an ordinary troopship. As such she did good service, and in after years under the name of the Camel, I think, made many voyages to and from the Cape. In addition to C.J. Mare & Co., there were the firms of R Green, the owner of the splendid sailing vessels engaged in the Indian and China trade, and the vessels had a splendid reputation. I can fancy I see Dicky Green, as he was called, watching with his fine Newfoundland dog by his side, the arrival of one of his vessels and saying, “Another new coat for Dicky Green,” or so it was believed by us boys.
It was very amusing if Mr Green was seen with his dog on the river banks when the boys were swimming. One or more of them would throw up his arms as if in danger of drowning, and as soon as the dog saw it, he would plunge into the river and then the race was on for the boys to get ashore before the dog. Sometimes they failed, and the dog caught them by the hair to get them ashore.
His memoirs continue ...“the last, if not quite the last, public event of which I was witness, was the bestowal of the medals on the heroes of the Crimean War by Queen Victoria, and the fireworks at night afterwards. Like many more, I climbed one of the trees in Hyde Park, and thereby escaped the crowd, and thankful I was at having done so, as I saw one unfortunate creature who had been killed by the fall of a rocket stick, passed out of the crowd hand over hand over the heads of the people, so closely packed it was that that was the only way to get the body out.”
William James’ memoirs contain some colourful anecdotes of his working life on the Himalaya as the following shows.
He goes on to say...“Matters had become so bad through unemployment after the close of the Crimean war that those who had the opportunity to leave for South Africa readily seized it and many hundreds more would have come had they had the opportunity. I had been working out a livelihood on my own account since my mother’s death; and on the advent of a stepmother it no longer seemed home to me, and a pretty severe struggle I found it, planing four sides of a timber stanchion (for fitting up bunks on emigrant or troopships) eight feet long for a halfpenny each. When as a boy on the Himalaya at one shilling per day, I used to supplement that amount by boiling the kettles of the workmen at 2d per head per week, as they had half an hour for breakfast, and the same for tea, which time was insufficient to allow them to leave the ship. It added considerably to my income, and also to my bump of combativeness, as almost invariably one had to the maintain possession of the stove (used for heating rivets) on which the kettles were boiled...”
As mentioned earlier, it was the opinion of the Earl’s younger brother Sir George Grey at that time Governor of the Cape, that the Kaffrarian government badly needed more immigrants to bring fresh blood into the young colony, to increase the numbers of marriageable women and provide an armed citizen force able to protect the settlers from skirmishes with the local people.
To this end he spent years in negotiation with the British government trying to persuade the politicians to finance his scheme to bring greater numbers of candidates to the Eastern Cape. Despite all his efforts, much of what he proposed was frustrated when the outbreak of the Indian Mutiny in 1856 led to the withdrawal of the British military garrison more urgently needed in the sub-continent, and the cost of supporting a larger standing army and the uninformed decisions of politicians in London brought Grey’s ambitious yet eminently sensible scheme to a premature end.
Originally it had been intended to send out several boatloads of emigrants to increase the numbers of skilled artisans in the new country, but the demands put on the British Government to provide support to their vastly more important Indian possession meant that funds were directed there rather than to the new arrivals. Consequently, the settlers were dumped in an empty country and left to fend for themselves with very little practical help or financial assistance.
A direct quote from WJ Symons’ memoirs reads... “The majority of the passengers were from Ireland and consisted, mainly, of single women; but there appears to have been some difficulty in obtaining the number required, for an advertisement was inserted in Lloyd’s Weekly (a London newspaper) for married men with their wives and families to proceed to the East London Harbour Works, Cape of Good Hope. It being so soon after the close of the Crimean War and employment difficult to obtain there was no trouble in getting the necessary number to fill up the Lady Kennaway; the advertisement appeared on the Sunday and on the Friday following the future Colonists sailed from Plymouth...”
Once arrived, the settlers courageously settled down to make the best of what must have been a rather frightening and intimidating prospect. Many succeeded in creating successful and happy lives for themselves and their families, and in the process became pillars of the community and reasonably well off.
In William James’s case, he eventually owned a prosperous sawmill, a cold-drink bottling factory and ran a successful building and contracting business, and in the process created employment for large numbers of people. His step-brother Robert Symons opened a successful wagon and carriage making business. Some time ago, I spoke to a man whose hobby it is to restore old carriages and wagons and he told me that within the last few years he has restored two Symons wagons and that amazingly, the wagons were still in working condition after many years of hard service.
...“Our thoughts as to what the other East London we were making for my readers may imagine to be varied and peculiar; and on arriving in sight of the port we were much disappointed. We had come in answer to an advertisement for mechanics for the East London harbour works, but no works were visible. All that could be seen was a small settlement in what is now the West Bank, and a military barracks at Fort Glamorgan, which is now the Convict Station. There were no inhabitants except natives on the East Bank, as the German military settlers who had arrived in the early part of the year had not yet been located in their various settlements or villages. Stutterheim was the headquarters. These men were raised for the Crimean war, but the war finished before their services were required, so they came out here as military settlers.
The road to King Williamstown and inland further on was on the West Bank, and had military stations at Fort Glamorgan, Fort Grey, Need’s Camp and Fort Murray, from all of which the immigrants received very cordial and kindly treatment on their journey inland seeking for employment for the married men and families. The many single women, of whom there were some 200 or more on board, were seeking life partners, and many of them succeeded in securing them amongst the military, and returned in a few months to the country they had left.
Naturally the change was a startling one compared to the lives and habits we had left in the other East London and it took some time and a little consideration to accustom oneself to the altered circumstances, but we succeeded in doing so, and it causes one to think that of those 400 or more souls who landed I can call to mind (beside myself and our family) only three persons in or about this part of the Colony. Of course the descendants are pretty numerous of the various families. Personally I secured a prize in the matrimonial market and we are now Darby and Joan, and it does seem hard at times to think that of a family of twelve, eight of whom have arrived at maturity, we two old fogeys, often feeling a sense of loneliness when we look back and picture our table with twelve or thirteen seated at it, to think we are reduced to ourselves. Only natural, I suppose, but none the less it produces a feeling of sadness that all the birds have left the nest, and the parents at times miss them...”
